Intelligent Design

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Charlemagne_III said:
You would think there would be intermediate subhuman brains that evolved, somewhere between the human and the ape, that are still around because they were better able than the apes but less able than men to thwart the challenges to survival.

Where are they?
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In Kentucky, running Creationist museums.
 
DrTaffy said:
No, it just requires you to accept the fact that sperm and ova are mindless, give rise to humans, and humans have minds. QED
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Thing is, I am not in the habit of accepting facts without adequate explanation, which is what is lacking when you use the phrase “requires you to accept.” Especially when those facts are presumed to entail other “facts.”

My mind doesn’t operate under those terms so it baffles me that an apparently intelligent being claims that reason, itself, “requires” such a move.

When you provide a plausible and adequate account for how minds come about from biochemical activity then I will have the degree of certainty “required” to accept that claim. Until then the jury is still out and collecting evidence.

I don’t accept rabbits out of hats merely because you claim “emerging” is a “fact” in the sense of “inexplicable because observed” and, therefore, sufficient to make it a requirement that the account be accepted. “Emerging” does not even come close to being an explanation merely because it has been observed.
 
tonyrey said:
If **seeing **were the required standard of proof in science many theories would have to be abandoned. Has anyone **seen **a multiverse?
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So you agree with me that it is a stupid criterion?
tonyrey said:
According to your criterion, the mind doesn’t exist because it is invisible, yet
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Not my criterion. Charlemagne proposed it, I am just pointing out the consequences of it being applied to his own claims.🤷
 
Peter_Plato said:
Thing is, I am not in the habit of accepting facts without adequate explanation, .
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Sure you are. That’s what faith is. At the very least you have to take reason and logic on faith.
Peter_Plato said:
which is what is lacking when you use the phrase “requires you to accept.”
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Not if you understand English. In responding to the question of whether I have seen mindless things producing intelligent beings, all I need to reply, and therefore all you need to understand, are the three points I listed.
Peter_Plato said:
When you provide a plausible and adequate account for how minds come about from biochemical activity then I will have the degree of certainty “required” to accept that claim. Until then the jury is still out and collecting evidence. .
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That is a different question than the one I was responding to.

If that is your standard of proof, you go first. Provide us with a similarly detailed account of how God comes about and interacts with us, including the mechanical details equivalent to our biochemistry. Then prove it all.:rolleyes:
Peter_Plato said:
I don’t accept rabbits out of hats merely because you claim “emerging” is a “fact” in the sense of “inexplicable because observed” and, therefore, sufficient to make it a requirement that the account be accepted.
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Where do I claim any such thing?
 
Al_Moritz said:
Actually no, there’s no moving on. You provide an answer, please. I am curious what it will be.
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An explanation? That’s as opposed to pointing out that minds actually do arise from ‘mindless things’ as was the original question?

Sorry, Al. That is way above my pay grade. But I can guarantee one thing: It happened very, very gradually. Just as there was no life one day and life the next, or no flight one day and flight the next, there wasn’t a time when you could catagorically say that something, obviously alive, had a mind.

You could start with Man and work back though a variety of life forms in a line of reducing intelligence, back though small mammals and Creationists, to a point where you could say that there is no mind as we know it. An insect perhaps. And even to the bottomost rung of the animal kingdom such as sponges. There’s a good cross-over between animals and plants.

At some point, each person will decide that this particular entity does not posess what she perceives to be intelligence and then go back to say that this is the point where there is no mind either.

But at some point, some line(s) of evolutionary development very gradually went from no mind to having a mind. And then from no intelligence to intelligence.

If it happenbed all at once, then it would certainly be a mystery. Or it would certainly be a good argument for God (or a god-like entity). But we know it happened and we can see it around us in as fine a gradation between the two extremes as you’d like. Evolution does the spadework.

But what it actually IS is a very debatable point.
 
Charlemagne_III said:
Where in the Bible does it say the sun is not a star?
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Genesis 1:16 The stars are treated differently from the sun and moon. The moon is most definitely not a star. The sun is grouped with the moon and not with the stars.
As to your second point, there was no sun in existence when God said “Let there be light!”
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In your interpretation. Mgr. Lemaître’s interpretation is different.
According to Genesis, the sun was created at a much later date.
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Genesis is not a science book. Trying to read modern science back into Genesis is a useless exercise.
The rest of that post is more undecipherable than Revelations.
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You asked for quotes; I gave them. I agree they are difficult for non-Buddhists, because they contain a lot of technical vocabulary. Usually the selections I post have been deliberately chosen to be easier for non-Buddhists to follow.

rossum
 
DrTaffy said:
So you agree with me that it is a stupid criterion?
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You seem to be contradicting a recent post of yours:
Have you ever seen an immaterial omnipotent being create life ex nihilo? If that is the required standard of proof for us, why is it not for you?
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Was that sarcastic?
 
Bradski said:
Objection, m’lud. Moving the goalposts.

Sustained. The forum will disregard that last comment. Mr. Plato, move on.
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Objection, Bradski.

I am not asking you to move the goalposts, just that you turn on the lights down on your side of the field. It’s a bit unfair to start the game if your end is in utter darkness, since there is no way to know that you even have goalposts set up down there. You do believe in fair play, no, Bradski?

Speaking of goalposts, let’s define the problem clearly. You, Rossum and DrTaffy (all the big guns are here, it seems) want to insist that OBSERVING the emergence of mind from matter is sufficient to “prove” minds can emerge from matter. To bolster your claim, you scurrilously bring in “a long time,” as if having both time and darkness on your side clinches the result. Oh, yes, you also appeal to random mutation as if basking the issue in even more obfuscation will magically bring it to light.

This seems, to me at least, very much like a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat, insisting that merely “observing” it happen ought to convince us that rabbits do come out of hats. Now, of course, you prefer the word “emerge,” to “pull,” but basically they are the same thing. It asks that skeptics put aside skepticism, refrain from bringing up the tough questions, and, instead, merely accept, purely for entertainment value, perhaps, that what has transpired in front of our eyes - albeit over millions of years - provides its own “proof.”

Getting back to the game metaphor: in other words, you are asking everyone to let the game commence with one side of the field (yours) in darkness with the goalposts obscured, while your side is free to “emerge” from the darkness and take potshots over here. Hardly fair.

So, the issue isn’t moving the goalposts so much as turning on the lights on your side of the field. Continuing to play the game fairly requires it, especially since you have home field advantage and, since you keep demanding that we play by your rules of naturalism, you have taken control of the light switch. Let’s call this the PSR of game play - the Principle of Sufficiency of Rules.
 
DrTaffy said:
Sure you are. That’s what faith is. At the very least you have to take reason and logic on faith.
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Well, no; reason - like truth, existence and God - is self-confirming.

They may require taking a fundamental option, but that is not based upon the kind of “faith” you suppose.
 
rossum said:
Genesis 1:16 The stars are treated differently from the sun and moon. The moon is most definitely not a star. The sun is grouped with the moon and not with the stars.

In your interpretation. Mgr. Lemaître’s interpretation is different.
rossum
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Genesis 1:16
“God made the two great lights, the greater one to govern the day, and the lesser one to govern the night, and the stars.”

Clearly Genesis is referring to the moon as a source of night light, not as a star.

Lemaitre’s interpretation was not different. Lemaitre never believed the Sun existed at the time the Big Bang began.
 
tonyrey said:
You seem to be contradicting a recent post of yours:
Have you ever seen an immaterial omnipotent being create life ex nihilo? If that is the required standard of proof for us, why is it not for you?
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No, as stated previously that was applying Charlemagne’s own principle to his own position, to illustrate that he cannot meet the criterion he is expecting us to meet.

If this is still not clear, try rereading the posts in order.
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DrTaffy said:
No, as stated previously that was applying Charlemagne’s own principle to his own position, to illustrate that he cannot meet the criterion he is expecting us to meet.

If this is still not clear, try rereading the posts in order.
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It will clarify your position if you explain what you think the mind is. Is it just the activity of the brain?
 
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